Global Ethics Day 2018

We’re marking Global Ethics Day (17 October 2018) by working with the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and the CFA Institute.

Confucius once said: ‘faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.’

So do we have the courage to be ready for an ethical future in the face of threats and risk?

Strong ethical standards are at the heart of the ACCA Qualification.

This helps ACCA qualified accountants secure a moral compass to guide what they do. But a strong ethical mindset is not immune from the challenges presented by globalisation, technology or even ordinary human psychology.

It’s good to be reminded about how to do the right thing and why. Sometimes we need to have difficult conversations and ask challenging questions.

That’s why we're supporting Global Ethics Day 2018, working with the Carnegie Council to shine a spotlight on all things ethical and professional.

We don’t claim to have all the ethical answers, but we can claim to lead the accountancy profession by bringing ethics and professionalism right into the core of the ACCA Qualification. In 2007, we were the first to introduce a professional ethics module into our qualification and we updated it in October 2017.

For us, ethics aligned with strong technical skills are vital to the future of the profession. We have a responsibility to act in the public interest: to do what is right, to lead by example, and to hold business and society to account.

Ethics and professionalism matter because they’re the foundations of the accountancy profession. But these foundations are not exclusive to accountancy. They’re shared by many professions, across the private and the public sectors.

We hope you’ll take a moment, not just on Global Ethics Day itself, to think about ethics and what it means to you.